"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... up. It was dark, but there was a little light close to the window: she had no writing-paper, but she would interline her old exercise-book. Down she ran, and crouching in the school-room window-seat, she wrote on in a trance of eager composition, till Norman called her, as he went to school, to help him to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... days Sir Launcelot lay as in a trance. At the end of that time he came to himself, and found those about him that had tended him in his swoon. These, when they had given him fresh raiment, brought him to the aged king—Pelles was his name—that ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... a short interval of relief, during which Lilas pretended to be making ready, then upon the very eve of her departure she sent for him in much haste and awoke him rudely from his trance. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the other hand, still muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he came to ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... are to note that there are three principal divisions: first, the instincts of construction or melody, which we share with lower animals, and which are in us as native as the instinct of the bee or nightingale; secondly, the faculty of vision, or of dreaming, whether in sleep or in conscious trance, or by voluntarily exerted fancy; and lastly, the power of rational inference and collection, of both the ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... They began, he thought, to look like Buddhists, or like those devoted persons who, in the times of the desert monks, remained for long periods posed upon pillows in sandy wastes musing upon Eternity. At first, as he met their fixed eyes, he fancied that they were, perhaps, falling into a trance, but presently the conviction seized him that they must be, on the contrary, busily thinking out some problem. He hoped fervently that he did not form part of it. At length the quivering silence was broken by ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the instinct of self-preservation startled me out of my trance, and I moved at last. There was just room for me to roll myself sideways off the bed. As I dropped noiselessly to the floor, the edge of the murderous canopy touched me on ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... felt that successful night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and do than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. A keen relish for dramatic expression revealed itself as part of my nature. But the strength of longing must be put by; and I put it by, and fastened it in with the lock of a resolution which neither time nor ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... from a trance, with his head on fire and his heart hot within him. Words sprang to his lips, and he gave them utterance with a sense ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of the "air of life". It is possible that this conception was popularized by the Semites. Inspiration was perhaps derived from these deities by burning incense, which, if we follow evidence obtained elsewhere, induced a prophetic trance. The gods were also invoked by incense. In the Flood legend the Babylonian Noah burned incense. "The gods smelled a sweet savour and gathered like flies over the sacrificer." In Egypt devotees who inhaled the breath of the Apis bull ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the band could keep presence of mind to go on playing the "Merry Widow," instead of stopping short with a gasp and crash of instruments, to start again with the "Tango Trance," her dance ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the trance towards an open room, and on entering it they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle in a wanton manner. By her he was informed ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... hung back a moment, but Mrs. Abigail, who had recovered from her tenth trance, and had been for some time engaged in an active search for Julia, now pounced upon her, and bore her off, before she had time to think, to the place of ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... though it had been stabbed and killed, and the woman whose eyes had been strained and lifted throughout as in a trance, and whose body had been rigid and quivering, sank down upon herself and let her eyelids fall, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... talking, and Halvor glanced over at Karin for advice; but she sat as if in a trance, staring blankly at ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... a place where the brook fled faster, sparkling brightly in the sunlight over its shallow bed of pebbles; it was only her runaway caroling that could keep pace with that, and so her glee mounted higher, the young man at her side half in a trance, watching her laughing face and drinking in ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... do as much? Is it not possible that that great moral ensamplar, guide, saint, and prophet has imprisoned in that bottle some one of the Pre-Adamite demons? I am not afraid to open the bottle, on the contrary, would be glad to do so. I am a clairvoyant and trance-medium, with materialization as a specialty. My name is Jefferson P. Smitz. Here is my card. I have a seance to-morrow night. Bring your bottle then, and I will open it. The price of admission is," ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... waking trance-this for lack of a better word-I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone," Tennyson wrote. "This has come upon me through REPEATING my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... hurt and distant, and, turning her head from me, drew the maid's arm in hers, and walked forward without heeding me. It stunned me, so that I could not even put one foot before the other, but stood there in the road, cap in hand, gasping for breath, and gazing after them like a man in a trance. Once, when they had gone a step or two, Jeannette glanced round with tears in her eyes, and a look that seemed not all reproach. But her mother drew her forward, and she turned; after which, for long enough, I saw her ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... frantic desire to drink, but no water was at hand, and to reach the spring once more was impossible: the qualms continued, deadly pains shot through my whole frame; I could bear my agonies no longer, and I fell into a trance or swoon. How long I continued therein I know not; on recovering, however, I felt somewhat better, and attempted to lift my head off my couch; the next moment, however, the qualms and pains returned, if possible, with greater violence than before. I am ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving: Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... report, so loud that it resembled the simultaneous discharge of a whole army of rifles, smote upon their ears; and then, as they stood in a trance of breathless expectation, wondering what was about to happen, an immense section of the icy cliff was seen to be in motion. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing rapidity, it slid downward into the water, with a continuous roaring reverberating crash, to which even the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... prophesied, that is, when he interpreted the true mind of God, he was wont to say this of himself: "He hath said, which heard the words of God and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." (67) Further, after he had blessed the Hebrews by the command of God, he began (as was his custom) to prophesy to other nations, and to predict their future; all of which abundantly shows that he had always ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... degrees her voice sank lower and lower till it was almost inaudible. Then it ceased altogether and she seemed to pass from trance to sleep. Hadden, who had been listening to her with an amused and cynical ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... sang in public with a troupe,—his troupe. He made her. She was the star and drew big houses, she was so beautiful and sang so sweetly, without any apparent effort. It was just like a bird, and when she sang the Southern melodies she seemed to be in a trance, seeing things we could not see. It made me cry to hear her. I know many good women are public singers, but mother shrank from it, and when they cheered like mad there used to be a frightened look in her eyes, as if she wondered why they were doing ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... But what the spirit says is true. You may rely upon it. I do not know what it said, for when I return from the trance state I remember nothing I have heard or seen while I have been in it. If you wish to ask more, you must have the kindness to come again. It is very fatiguing to me. You can see that I am not in good health. The hours are from ten ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... became aware that while he gazed, like a man in a trance, the two young people walked on their way and were on the point of passing beyond reach of eye or ear. He made a sudden involuntary movement as if he would call them back, and for the first time his faithful hiding-place, strained beyond silent endurance, betrayed him with a loud ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the real Martian behind the scenes, who dictated the contents of this book through the medium to Mr. Kennon. It was further stated that "The medium was held in trance for short periods only, as the medium must necessarily experience the atmosphere of Mars which is more rarified than that of your Earth." Writes also that the medium seemed to have some difficulty, and at first pain in breathing while ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... himself more strongly for the hour Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear To him who knows thy secret, and, in shower, And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower Where he may rest until the heavens are fair! Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance Of onward movement steady and serene, Where oft, in struggle and in contest keen, His eyes will opened be, and all the dance Of life break on him, and a wide expanse Roll upward through the void, sunny ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... newspaper, and we crowded about him to look at it. It was a large clipping from the section of one of the metropolitan journals which carries a host of such advertisements as "spirit medium," "psychic palmist," "yogi mediator," "magnetic influences," "crystal gazer," "astrologer," "trance medium," and the like. At once I thought of the sallow, somewhat mystic countenance of Dudley, and the idea flashed, half-formed, in my mind that somehow this clue, together with the purchase of the book on clairvoyance, might prove the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... other, grew nothing but the oaks; the gentle slope was a play-ground for sunshine and shadow, as I first saw it; for then the shadows of the oaks were lengthening over the grass, and the waving grey wreaths of moss served sometimes as a foil, sometimes as an usher to the sunbeams. I stood in a trance of joy and sorrow; they were fighting so hard for the mastery; till I knew that my aunt and Miss Pinshon had come ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... high, more high, "Or we shall be belated: "For slow and slow that ship will go, "When the Marinere's trance is abated." ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... went upstairs and consulted with the doctor, who wondered at his protracted absence. There was no change in Clara yet. She lay in a condition which could not be called a trance or a sleep. She did not seem to be in any great pain; but she was unconscious of all ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... troubled her. She did not know how to go about it; she hesitated to seek those who advertised their alleged occult powers for sale,—trance-mediums, mind-readers, palmists—all the heterogeneous riffraff lurking always in metropolitan purlieus, and always with a sly ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... earliest legends, the Wandering Jew was about thirty years old when he stood in the road to Golgotha, and struck the Saviour, and ordered him to go forward. At the end of every hundred years, the undying man falls into a trance, during which his body returns to the age it was when the curse was pronounced. In all other respects ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dimmer Grows the preternatural glimmer Of that trance the South Wind brought me on her subtle wings of balm, For behold! its spirit flieth, And its fairy murmur dieth, And the silence closing round me is a dull ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... found the Crescent, and number Two— I have rung the bell—the servant has come— I have opened my lips, and words run through, And they ask 'Is Mr. Clarence at home?' A man has appear'd from some inner place (I heard him describ'd 'ere this trance began)— Is he moving away into empty space? I must come to life and ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... screamed with fright. Barbara ran madly over the ground, back and forth, not certain where to hide. Eleanor stood shivering and Anne rushed over to ask Polly what had happened. Polly explained in a whisper, and Eleanor, as in a trance, watched her sister running about with something that seemed to cleave to her foot closer than a porous- plaster. Finally, Eleanor came to her senses and ran over to keep Barbara from rolling under the burros ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... let them have husbands to lift them above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes," says he, liftin' his eyes to the heavens, and kinder shettin' 'em, some as if he was goin' into a trance, "fly around, ye angels, in your native haunts! mingle not with rings, and vile laws; flee away, flee ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... obstinate after his late success. 'Never mind, sir. I can stand pretty firm of myself, sir, I believe, without being shored up by you.' And having given utterance to this retort, Mr Willet fixed his eyes upon the boiler, and fell into a kind of tobacco-trance. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... year. Then I wanted you to be ill—very, very ill for a long time, and weak, till your heart could hardly beat at all for want of blood, and you lay in a trance. Then the doctors would say, if anyone would give their blood he might come to life again. But no one could be found, for there were only strangers there. Then I hear about it, and come quickly, and the doctors start at once, for there is no time to be lost. And they draw off my ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... in a trance. Without any clear idea as to what he was doing, he rose slowly to his feet. At that instant the lion discovered him. It crouched down, its eyes like sparks of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... villages twenty miles back from the line lay all that night hideous in respirators. Anxious Staffs rang up other anxious Staffs. Gunners questioned the infantry. The infantry desired information from the gunners. All along the line the private soldier was jolted from that kind of trance which he calls "getting down to it," and was bidden to stand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... maddened him. He remembered Rip Van Winkle; he recalled the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus; he thought of the afflicted woman whom he saw once at a menagerie in a trance, in which she had been for twenty years continuously, excepting when she awoke for a few moments at long intervals to ask for something to eat. Perhaps when he and Mrs. Fogg were dead the baby might be rented to a menagerie, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... sympathisers who gathered around her had observed her departure. They are led to form their conjectures as to the cause of this sudden break in her trance of anguish. She had up till that moment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and which we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking from facing the gladsome light of heaven, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... race overshadowed her and possessed her. She felt that, to destroy the destroyer of her peace, she would be willing to meet and suffer all that man could inflict upon her body, or devil do to her soul! And so she brooded, until suddenly out of this trance-like state she started, as if a ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... innumerable restrictions, her feet bound, her actions restrained, not only by outward force, but by the law of her nature, more effectual still,—has desired to be. That voiceless poet, to whom what can be is nothing, but only what should be if miracle could be attained to fulfil her trance and rapture of desire—is held by no conditions, modified by no circumstances; and miracle is all around her, the most credible, the most real of powers, the very air she breathers. Jeanne of France is the very flower of this passion of the imagination. She is altogether impossible ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... for some time, quite dazed; partly because his pupil was so dilated he could hardly see—partly (he thinks) because he in some way became unconscious; although when he woke from this little seeming trance, which may have lasted for more than a minute, he found himself still standing upright on his legs. What woke him was the sudden consciousness of the north, which he hadn't felt for many years; and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... gave a few lucid directions in the quiet impersonal voice of a man in a trance. Razumov made ready without a word of answer. As he was leaving the room the voice on ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... turned south here at the gate and went down the street, a-lookin' neither to the right nor the left. He looked to me like a man in a trance, almost. He keeps right on through Legal Row till he comes to Franklin Street, and then he goes up Franklin to B. Weil & Son's confectionary store; and there he turns in. I happened to be followin' 'long behind him, with a few others—with several others, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... silent? But it was not expressed! We maintain, on the contrary, that it was—expressed at the time, in part by monks, and scalds, and orators, and expressed afterward in the glad energy of the spring which human nature made from its trance, into new life and motion. The elements of poetry had been accumulating in secret. The renovation of letters merely opened a passage for what had been struggling for vent. What is Dante's work but a beautiful incarnation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... attended a Baptist meeting. We sat facing the preacher, but at the far side of the house. My mind was absorbed in meditating upon my future labors. Gradually I lost consciousness of my surroundings, and my whole being seemed in another locality. I was in a trance, and saw future events. What I then saw was to me a reality, and I will describe it as such. I traveled in a strange land and among a people that I had never seen. I was kindly received by the people, ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... was possible for poor Cardo; the nurses were unremitting in their care and attention, but nothing roused him from his trance-like stupor. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... with tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that sun-chequered, echoing corner. Holding his feet, he stared out of a drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among uncertain thoughts. There is nothing that so apes the external bearing of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following liquid laws, with which a river contends among obstructions. It seems the very play ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... colt—broncho, loaned to the farm To be broken in time without fury or harm, Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm, Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing ... The butterflies there in the bush were romancing, The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance, So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces, O broncho that would not ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Alix heard nothing. In a trance of feverish dread she went on and on, trying to escape from the conviction that grew momentarily more and ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!' Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Gloucester stood aghast in speechless trance; 'To arms!' cried Mortimer, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... eloquent prophecy about the human mind. He regards the whole of nature as a development of higher forms out of the lower, through shade after shade of systematic change. The dim stir of chemical atoms towards the axes of a crystal form, the trance-like life of plants, the animal troubled by strange irritabilities, are stages which anticipate consciousness. All through that increasing stir of life this was forming itself; each stage in its unsatisfied susceptibilities ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the future of an even more undesirable quality—seems to me a very fantastic combination. But I believe it was not so bad. She was being, she wrote, mercifully drugged by her task. She had learned to "converse" all day long, mechanically, absently, as if in a trance. An uneasy trance it must have been! Her worst moments were when off duty—alone in the evening, shut up in her own little room, her dulled thoughts waking up slowly till she started into the full consciousness of her position, like a person waking up in contact ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... time to stirre him fro[m] his trance: I pray awake sir: if you loue the Maide, Bend thoughts and wits to atcheeue her. Thus it stands: Her elder sister is so curst and shrew'd, That til the Father rid his hands of her, Master, your Loue must liue a maide at home, And therefore has ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... (insensibility) 823; somnolence; drowsiness &c. adj.; nodding &c. v.; oscitation[obs3], oscitancy[obs3]; pandiculation[obs3], hypnotism, lethargy; statuvolence heaviness[obs3], heavy eyelids. sleep, slumber; sound sleep, heavy sleep, balmy sleep; Morpheus; Somnus; coma, trance, ecstasis[obs3], dream, hibernation, nap, doze, snooze, siesta, wink of sleep, forty winks, snore; hypnology[obs3]. dull work; pottering; relaxation &c. (loosening) 47; Castle of Indolence. [Cause of inactivity] lullaby, sedative, tranquilizer, hypnotic, sleeping pill, relaxant, anaesthetic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Winslow was left to ponder whether "antique" or "unique" was intended and to follow his train of thought wherever it chanced to lead him, while the child prattled on. They came in sight of the Smalley front gate and Jed came out of his walking trance to ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and in front, before his very eyes, rolled up the beautiful gates of ivory, and he entered into the places of flowers and singing and wonderful veiled forms. Sometimes he quite lost touch with the outer world, forgetting to eat his dinner or go to bed, and lay in a state of trance, his consciousness working far out of the body. And on other occasions he walked the streets on air, half-way between the two regions, unable to distinguish between incarnate and discarnate forms, and not very far, probably, beyond the strata where poets, ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... said, as if in a trance, "if anything fell upon him from here—" and she gave her husband a ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... give Frank a show after this!" he thought. "Didn't I tell Put, the blooming idiot? It took him a long time to get out of his trance." ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... hurry things, sir, but the boy's ready. He's in a trance-state now," he reported, pointing to the pair of visiplates at ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... wanted of her, nursing Clarence, waiting on me, ordering dinner, making the tea, and so forth; but it was quite evident that life began for her on the Saturdays, when Lawrence came down, and ended on the Mondays, when he went away. If, in the meantime, she sat down to work, she went off into a trance; if she was sent out for fresh air, she walked quarter-deck on the esplanade, neither seeing nor hearing anything, we averred, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... owed him too much of keen enjoyment to see him cut down in swift flight. In the moment that the master's back was turned I hurled a knot at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst away, and Old Ben, shaken out of his trance by the whirr of wings, dropped obediently to the charge and turned his head to say reproachfully with his eyes: "What in the world is the matter with you back there—didn't ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... the Northern nations that the soul escaped from the body in the shape of a mouse, which crept out of a corpse's mouth and ran away, and it was also said to creep in and out of the mouths of people in a trance. While the soul was absent, no effort or remedy could recall the patient to life; but as soon as it had ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... cherry hue, were full and slightly pouting; the mouth perhaps the merest shade larger than it ought to have been for perfect beauty; the chin round, with a well-defined dimple in its centre. Altogether, it was the loveliest face I had ever seen; and I stood for some time gazing in a trance of admiration on it, the feeling being mingled with one of deep regret that fate had, in snatching away the living original, deprived me of such rich possibilities of mutual love. I felt keenly that, had she continued to live, my life would, in all probability, have been widely different ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... methodically, as if they were not hurried on by any physical concerns. As they drew near, I saw them to be Onan and Zimri, the Lords of Past and Future. When they arrived I was awakened from the trance that I had fallen into, and I gave them a slight bow, for I was still standing upright. The look on their faces was one of sorrow, for no matter how many times they had seen the destruction of humanity, each time it brought only fresh, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... away and began to talk hurriedly with another man who showed him some papers and Tom watched him as one in a trance. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... pass with her out- stretched hands and, after a dramatic pause, fell heavily on her pillow, where she instantly proceeded to fall into a deep and trance-like slumber—a slumber that prevailed through the terrified questionings, whimperings, and agitated shakings ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... her sixteen hours' busy trance in the outer world, such a choice of pleasures lay before us as no other mortal has ever known. She had been all her life a great traveller, and had dwelt in many lands and cities, and seen more of life and the world and nature than most people. I had but to ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... fight for you, And here is money ready too, If you have lost in play. You're even welcome to my handsome slave, With jet black hair, and eyes so grave." "No!" said the other, "I need naught, But ere I slept to-night, I thought, Being in a trance, that you were sad, And as the thought nigh drove me mad, I hurried to your tent, And ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... thou?" cried Manfred, starting from his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the collar; "how darest thou utter such treason? Thy ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... remember, by a frigidly ingenious rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window—does it not seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty of a Claude with the misery and ruin of a ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... I saw the buildings; the architecture doubtless was the same, but the scene was changed! The beauties of Oxford were vanished! I was awakened from the most delightful of dreams to a disgusting reality, and would have given kingdoms to have once more renewed my trance. The friends of Hector, though not all of them his equals in turbulence profaneness and folly, were of the same school. Their language, though less coarse, was equally insipid. Their manners, when not so obtrusive, were more bald. They ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... certainly not the agents most in request for restoring a man to the enjoyment of his erring faculties; and, if I felt addled and confused before, I had scarcely passed the threshold of Verey's when I became absolutely like one in a trance. The large salon was more than usually crowded, and it was with difficulty that we obtained a place at a table where some other English were seated, among whom I recognised by lately made acquaintance, Mr. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... from a trance. She ran out of the study and through the dark library to the drawing-room and the front windows. Just in time, she stood behind the curtains, and caught a last glimpse of Canning's receding back. Brave and dear ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... went on rifling his victim, Miles partially recovered from his trance of horror, and anxiety for his own life nerved him to attempt action of some sort. He thought of the revolver for the first time at that moment, and the remembrance seemed to infuse new life into him. Putting his right ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to awake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... not answered, and pressed service which was not heeded. The little wheels of life go on, even when the great wheel is paralysed or broken. Maltravers was, if I may so express it, in a kind of mental trance. His emotions had left him thoroughly exhausted. He felt that torpor which succeeds and is again the precursor of great woe. At length he was alone, and the solitude half unconsciously restored him to the sense of his heavy misery. For it may be observed, that when misfortune ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a workers' republic? After Sinn Fein, the Labor party? Madame Markewicz is high in the councils of both Sinn Fein and Labor. One day, lost in one of her trance-like meditations in which she states her intuitions with absolute disregard of ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... progressed she envied passionately the Duke who seemed criminally stupid in his misunderstanding of Viola's love. The surprise of the play was Genevieve Singleton's Malvolio. Even Judith was moved out of her trance of adoration to laughter ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... in wonder, while the pilot slowly paced the quarter-deck, and then, rousing from his trance, gave forth the cheering order that called each man to his station, to perform the desired evolution. The confident assurances which the young officer had given to the pilot respecting the qualities of his vessel and his own ability to manage her, were fully realized by the result. ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the white people. In her cheap suitcase which she had carried wrapped in her shawl on her back to the ranch, Annie-Many-Ponies still had that doll. So with her eyes fixed upon the letter, her mind stared trance-like at the vision of that long-ago day which had been to her ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... the night air aroused Beryl from her profound trance; and lighting the gas over her dressing table, she re-read the magical words that had transformed her narrow world. This was Monday the 26th, and next Saturday was the limit of the proposed interview. One day must suffice for necessary preparation, and starting by early morning express ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Rhoda Gray, gazing into that dimly lighted room, as though she were suddenly held spellbound as in some horrible and amazing trance. Like a hideous jack-in-the-box the gray head popped above the level of the table again, and quick as a flash, a revolver was thrust into the Adventurer's face; and the Adventurer, caught at a disadvantage, since his hand in his coat pocket was below the intervening table top, stood there as though ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... Barney, who stood staring at the whole proceeding like one in a trance. "Did ye iver ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... turned as though in a trance. How was this? The copper bath he had used for months was gone—gone like a shot, with nothing to make it go. Nothing, that is, except an electric cell and a few drops of the unknown solution. He looked at the empty space where it had stood, at the broken glass covering ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... fancy, we have made it real to ourselves in what manner Shakspeare's writing evidences that he wrought as an artist,—one who has an idea in his mind of an effect he desires to produce, and elaborates it with careful skill, not in a trance or ecstasy, but "in clear dream and solemn vision." The subtile tone of feeling to be struck is as much a matter of art as the action or argument to be opened. And it is no less proper to judge (as we have done) of the presence of art by its result in this respect than in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... ghost of the Zhack flitted by in a trance; And the Squidjum hid under a tub As he heard the loud hooves of the Hooken ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... where the air was cool and fresh, wrapped in a considerable quantity of dry linen, together with many spices, and aromatics, what could be more opportune, or proper, to stimulate his drowsed senses, and recall the unfortunate sufferer to life? Suppose then, that on awaking from his trance, he disengaged himself, and took himself away as secretly as possible, might not all this have happened? Is it impossible? And does it not look plausible? It is not improbable that he might after ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... mountain-tomb— Let once the vindicating ray Leap out amid the anxious gloom, 605 And steel and fire have done their part And the prize falls on its finder's heart; So, trial after trial past, Wilt thou fall at the very last Breathless, half in trance 610 With the thrill of the great deliverance, Into our arms forevermore; And thou shalt know, those arms once curled About thee, what we knew before, How love is the only good in the world. 615 Henceforth ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... This little book will be fortunate far beyond its deserts if it tempts a few readers to extend the circle of their visionary acquaintances, of friends who, like Brahma, know not birth, nor decay, "sleep, waking, nor trance." ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... perceive to be in him by his so accurate decision of this so difficult and thorny cause, that their spirits with the extremity of the rapture being elevated above the pitch of actuating the organs of the body, they fell into a trance and sudden ecstasy, wherein they stayed for the space of three long hours, and had been so as yet in that condition had not some good people fetched store of vinegar and rose-water to bring them again unto their former ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to Joppa. 9. On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: 10. And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, 11. And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 12. Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... folded the world in her web, it is by all means the course to take. Your staff rings on the hard ground; the road, a misty white belt, gleams and vanishes before you; the woods are cavernous and still; the fields lie in a lunar trance, and you will yourself return fairly mesmerized by the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... eyes looked languishing on mine, And wreathing arms did soft embraces join, A doubtful trembling seized me first all o'er; Then, wishes; and a warmth, unknown before: What followed was all ecstasy and trance; Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance, And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumult tost, I thought my breath and my new ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings, But I wish that fate had left me free To wander these quiet haunts with thee, Till the eating cares of earth should depart, And the peace of the scene pass into my heart; And I envy thy stream, as it glides along, Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... be one—to devote myself entirely to divine abstraction, to heavenly glory, and to incessant worship—and, stupendous as the assertion may seem, for six weeks I did so. This resolution became a passion—a madness. I was as one walking in a sweet trance—I revelled in secret bliss, as if I had found a glorious and inexhaustible treasure. I spoke to none of my new state of mind— absorbed as I was, I yet dreaded ridicule—but I wrote hymns, I composed sermons. If I found my attention moving from heavenly matters, I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the water thrice, rose like one in a trance, and advancing to Dingaan placed the ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... from her trance of terror with a quavering breath. She did not understand what had passed, nor a word of what the labourers had said; and in her belief over the peril escaped, and her utter fatigue, she gave the child to Anastasia, lay back, and closed her eyes. A sudden ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all friends of Hungary I hope that that country will soon throw off the trance of Prussianism, which has led the Dual Monarchy into ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... never before had seen a girl on the verge of hysteria, swore deep and long under his breath, staring as if in a trance. He came to himself only when the water overflowed the manhole, and he let go of the spout with a carelessness that earned him a wetting as it ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... was by enchantment shut up to sleep 100 years in a castle surrounded by a dense forest, and was delivered from her trance at the end of that term by a prince, to admit whom the forest ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the lost lamb to her snowdrift!" he sneered, in a way that I resented. "One would think she had hypnotized you on the spot! And she must be in a trance herself, for she had not ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... she became rigid in her seat like a figure of stone. Had I continued she would have gone off into a trance. When I ceased speaking she opened wide her eyes, and murmured with fixed gaze, as though still dazed: "O Traveller in the path of Destruction! Who is there that can stay your progress? Do I not see that none shall stand ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... midst of the bustle and cheer of this week another swift and sinister cloud descended upon me. One evening, as mother and I were sitting together, she fell into a terrifying death-like trance from which I could not rouse her, a condition which alarmed me so deeply that I telegraphed to my father in Dakota and to my brother in Chicago, telling them to come at once. It seemed to me that the final moment of our ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... at times she suffered severely. She was a reputed witch, averred to have done serious mischief to her neighbours. For this reason, she was indicted for holding communication with demons. She admitted having intercourse with the Queen of Elfland and the good neighbours. When she fell into a trance, which happened often, she saw her cousin, William Sympsoune, of Stirling (who had been conveyed away to the hills by the fairies), from whom she received a salve that could cure every disease; and from ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the Perfect His eyes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be suspended. There is something weird and uncanny in such a preternatural silence and apparent death-in-life. I became impressed with the idea that some form of catalepsy had seized and bound them in strong trance. The eyeballs were fixed: they stared at me and saw me not: the hands were glued to the weapons, and the feet to the floor. I suspect there must have been some stolen relief when no guest happened to be present, yet, come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the pomps of life rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death. Dream forms itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford dreams remoulds itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber,—the blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of 'Who might sit thereon;' the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the funeral ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... accordingly went to rest—and, sooth to say, the sense of security, joined to his complete exhaustion, and the comforts of a warm good bed, gave him such a perception of luxury as he had never conceived before. In a few minutes he fell into a dreamless and unbroken trance. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said the seer, who had appeared to be in a trance state during this colloquy. "She is sailing for England from Australia. I see the name distinctly: the Marston Towers. The same man is on board of her. The ship arrives at London. The scene closes; another ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... thought of a great many things this evening," replied Kathrien, vibrant with excitement, yet instinctively lowering her voice so as not to break in on Willem's semi-trance. "Little things that I've never noticed before. I'm putting them together. Just as Willem put that picture together. And I must know ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... cloudy light of vision; for whether he understand or not, it may be that voices of angels and archangels have spoken in the cloud, and whatever wildness come upon his life, feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. But a man so plunged in trance is of necessity somewhat still and silent, though it be perhaps the silence and the stillness of a lamp; and the movement of the Play as a whole, if we are to have time to hear him, must be without ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... exclusively. After a few weeks I succeeded in completely suspending animation in one of them for several hours. There was no life apparently existing during that period. It was not a trance or coma, but the complete simulation of death. No harmful results followed the revivifying of the animal. The contraction of the cells was far more difficult to accomplish; I finished my last experiment ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... hot trance I pass, Great Love, I feel thy charm; There hangs my lady's picture near— A picture yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... was forty years old he went one day to a mountain called Hira which was not far from Mecca. And here a trance came upon him and in the night he believed that he saw the angel Gabriel. The angel was surrounded by a flaming aureole and in his hand he held a scroll of fire from which he commanded Mohammed to read. Now Mohammed knew not how to read or write, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the two stars broke under the strain, and by that time news had come to Mr. Fairbanks that Wall Street was Easy Money's other name. Armed with his grin, he marched into the office of De Coppet & Doremus, and when the manager came out of his trance Shakespeare's worst enemy was holding down the job ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... my husband and I awoke from our honeymoon trance, we found ourselves in California, strangers in a lone land, penniless and jobless. My husband was blessed with neither college education nor profession, but we were both young and undaunted—therefore we pulled through. We rented an apartment, furnished, at $15 per month and buckled ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... saw—no, it was only a glimpse; and with that the strange trance-vision ended. What must have come after that would in all certainty have driven him mad there and then, before his work had even begun; but at that moment, swiftly severing the darkness that was falling over his soul, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!" Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, 10 As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance: "To arms!" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... very slightly. He put out a hand to pick up his pen and resume writing; but in the act fell back into the brown study, the trance, the rapt gaze at a knot in the woodwork of the table. His hand rested for a moment by the ink-pot around which his fingers felt, like a blind man's softly making sure of its outline and shape. He withdrew it to his tunic-pocket, pulled out pipe and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... women of the country were perhaps in advance of the men in responding to the new influences which were at work upon them. The number of convents increased rapidly, every countryside had its wonder-working nun who could unveil the mysteries of the world while in the power of some ecstatic trance, and women everywhere were the most tireless supporters of the clergy. It was natural that this should be the case, for there was a nervous excitement in the air which was especially effective upon feminine minds, and the Spanish woman in particular was sensitive and impressionable and easily ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... little while she lay and watched it in a sort of trance; and then in the stillness full realization came to her, and she knew that she was not mad or dreaming. This was no imagination: ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... from a trance; and Mac threw a sharp, searching glance at me, as I sat curled up against a swag. "You're right," he laughed; "there's not a trace of the towney left." And rising to "see about fixing up camp," he added: "You'd better look out, missus! Once caught, you'll never ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn |
